


our days like clocks unwinding

by Brinny



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angsty Schmoop, Barry Allen Needs a Hug, Barry and Iris are the Gold Standard, F/M, Family, Family Feels, Gen, I'm Sorry, Just all the feels, Married Barry Allen/Iris West, POV First Person, POV Iris West, This Turned Out So Much Sadder Than I Meant To, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-12-31 23:28:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18324131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brinny/pseuds/Brinny
Summary: Essentially, a glimpse throughout the years leading up to when Barry disappears in the Crisis. Mostly, Nora as a baby, but also with some Barry and Iris sexy times (because they made that baby somehow, right?)[I'm, like, obsessed with Barry leaving Iris in the Crisis. I can't even explain it. Maybe because the show is refusing to acknowledge it?]





	our days like clocks unwinding

**Author's Note:**

> Title of the fic is taken from "We Will Run" by Jens Kuross, the chorus of which includes, "We're still running back home" and the verse (bridge?) is, "The youngest heart beats loudest. The oldest, steady and content. Our days like clocks unwinding. We came, we saw, we loved, we left."
> 
> So, I'm pretty sure this fic is kind of a mess, but I'm also pretty sure it's going to be Jossed (do people still use this term? do you know what I'm taking about?) by the end of this season. Eh, whatever. Also, there's, like, a TON of sappy WestAllen quotes littered throughout this thing, if that's your jam.

 

 

 

You told me that you loved me before you even knew what love was.

I told you that I had always been yours.

 

 

 

(Once, I promised you that I would love you until the stars stopped shining.

You laughed and asked, “In which universe?”

I kissed you. “All of them.”)

 

 

 

When Nora was born, we stopped being just Barry and Iris. It scared me at first. I wasn’t sure how to be anything else.

But I quickly realized how much I was going to love it being the three of us, how much I was going to love being Barry and Iris and Nora, because nothing seemed more perfect than our little family.

 

 

 

Nora was such a good baby, so happy and sweet.  

Remember how we used to spend hours just looking at her? We used to spend hours looking at her small, ski-jump nose (just like yours) and looking at the pout of her pink lips (just like mine). And hours looking at the way her tiny fingers curled into tiny fists when she got mad and how she pushed out her tiny chin before she would cry.

Hours of looking at her as she slept.

Hours of looking at her and deciding that she had your mom’s eyes and my dad’s smile.

(It took only minutes to decide that she had your long, long lashes and my serious brow.

“Poor kid,” I’d joked.)

I told you how my heart had never felt so full before. How I never knew it was possible to love something as much as I loved her.

We made her. Our baby.

 

 

 

The spring Nora turned four months old, she was going through a growth spurt, which meant that she didn’t sleep for more than an hour at a time and cried any time she was awake and not feeding.

I was exhausted.

It was the only time I remember her being difficult. Our usually sweet, happy girl.

You tried to help, as much as you could, but she refused to take the bottle. She would kick and scream and cry. And when you would try to rock and soothe her and sing her sweet, little lullabies, she would squirm and fuss.

I loved our baby (our perfect little you and me), but I started to feel like I had lost a part of myself to her.

(It didn’t help that I hadn’t showered in a week and hadn’t been able to sleep longer than three hour stretches for the last few days. My breasts were sore to the touch and, somehow, despite my best efforts to alternate between feedings, appeared to be a little lopsided from Nora’s constant nursing.)

You came home from work to find me sitting on the sofa, with little Nora pressed against my chest, holding back frustrated tears.

“I’m so tired, Barry.”

“Oh, Iris.”

You smiled at me, sad and sympathetic, before kissing my cheek and lifting Nora from my arms. She had fallen asleep with my nipple still in her mouth, but I didn’t want to move her, because I was afraid that if I did, she would start to scream again.

(I was right.)

“Go get some sleep. Maybe have a bath to relax you first?” you suggested. “I’ll stay with Nora.”

“But—”

I started to protest, knowing she was just going to keep crying as long as you held her, but you shook your head firmly.

“I’ll take her for a walk,” you said. “Or we’ll drive over to Joe and Cecile’s. You need rest.” You brought Nora up to your shoulder and rubbed her back, which seemed to quiet her for a bit. “Just worry about you, okay?”

 

 

When you came back to the loft, after I had stood under the hot spray of the shower for what seemed like hours and hours, you’d somehow gotten Nora to sleep in her crib.

I sat on our bed in only my robe, my hair still wet and my head foggy from the heat of the shower and a lack of proper sleep.

“Hey,” you said, kissing the top of my head. “Come here.”

You grabbed my hand and I sluggishly followed you to the other side of our bedroom. You opened the closet door and moved me in front of the full-length mirror. Standing behind me, your knuckles briefly stroking my neck, you untied my bathrobe. I was too tired to try to close it back up, but flinched at this new, naked Iris who stared back at me.

“What do you see?” you asked.

“I see a mess,” I said.

A sigh. “Iris.”

“My breasts are huge, I have all these stretch marks everywhere, and I’m never going to lose the rest of this baby weight. I hate this,” I confessed, tears pooling along my lower lashes. Suddenly, I felt ashamed and could feel my face heat up in embarrassment. How could I be this selfish? And, yet, I still added, “I just want to be me again.”

You frowned and wiped away the tears that had fallen down to my cheeks, sweetly kissed my ear, and said, “Iris, really look at yourself. Look how beautiful you are. This is you.”

“Barry, no.” I reached for the robe’s belt, trying to tie it back up. “Stop. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

But you tugged the belt out of my fingers and cupped your hand over my stomach (still a bit soft, not flat like it used to be, and lined with faint scars of stretched skin that my doctor promised would fade over time) and said, “You held our baby in there, Iris. And your body is going to look different and feel different, but this is you.”

You turned my face towards yours, so your mouth could catch mine in a slow kiss. “I want you to see what I see.”

Holding me tight against you, with one hand tucked beneath my breast and the other still pressed to my cheek, I could feel you hard against my thigh as you kissed down my neck.

We’d had sex a handful of times since Nora was born, but always hurried and with the lights off. It wasn’t easy to find the time (especially lately) or be in the mood. But you were always patient. Always understanding.

“I just don’t want you to ever forget how beautiful you are, Iris. Or how happy you’ve made me,” you said. You kissed me again before pulling my robe closed and tying it shut. “C’mon. Let’s get you in bed.”

God, how I loved you.

And if I had lost myself before, right then, right in that moment, you had found me.

 

 

 

We did something like that before, remember? Back when we just started dating, one of the first times that we had sex, you asked me to sit on the end of my bed, so I was facing the mirror that was propped up on the bureau. You kissed me softly, you always kissed me so softly, and then spread my knees apart.

“Touch yourself,” you said, your voice low. You sat beside me, your hand sliding down the front of your briefs. “I want to watch you.”

I think that was the first time you left me speechless.

(The second was when you sang to me. When you gave me a ring and asked me to be yours every hour and minute.)

“Let me see you,” you said. Your eyes found mine in the mirror. “Show me how beautiful you are.”

“Barry, no. I can’t.”

“C’mon, Iris.  I want you to see what I see.”

I watched your reflection. You licked your lips. Your hand was moving beneath the fabric of your underwear, stroking yourself steadily. You were looking at me in a way I’d never seen before. I was used to your looks of unapologetic adoration, all full of sweet love and longing. I wasn’t used to this dark, intimate stare. I liked it.

I pushed my panties to the side, slipping my fingers through my wet folds and joined you. I moved my fingers in time with yours, starting slow, then gradually picking up speed.

You closed your eyes and came in your fist with, “Iris” on your lips. It didn’t take me long after that.

 

 

 

 

I used to write you love notes.

I would be working on a deadline (or at the playground with Nora or shopping for groceries) and I would think about your smile and remember how much I loved you.  

I kept a whole shoebox full of scribbled words on post-its (or gum wrappers or the backs of grocery lists and receipts) and I don’t think I ever told you that.

Did I?

 

 

 

Remember our second anniversary, how I drank too much champagne?

Remember how I fell into your arms? How we didn’t even make it upstairs? Remember the desperate push and pull of our mouths? Remember how much we needed to have each other?

Because I remember. I remember everything.

I remember how easily you slid inside of me, both of us still half-dressed (and me, half-drunk). I remember how it felt to be so in love with you. How it felt to be loved by you.

I remember how I told you that I’d been kind of careless with my birth control that month. How I had teased, “How old do you think Nora was when she was here?”

I remember how you smirked, how you gripped me a bit tighter and put your mouth to my ear and whispered, “Yeah? Want to make a baby? Want me to come inside you?”

And I remember how it felt when you did. How you had kissed me softly, always so softly. I remember how it felt like nothing could touch this moment. Because there was nothing better than just you and me and this.

There was nothing better than you being Barry and me being Iris.

 

 

 

 

(Nora was actually conceived four weeks later.

It had been a long day and we were both in our sweatpants, sitting on the sofa and watching television, when you turned to me and said, “You wanna have sex?”

And I shrugged and said, “Yeah, sure.”

So romantic, right?)

 

 

 

 

When Nora was a little older than two, she went through this phase where she refused to go to bed until you kissed her goodnight. Every night I bathed her, read her a story, and sang her a song, but when I tucked her into bed, she looked up at me and asked for you.

“Where Dada? Need my kiss.”

“Dada will be up in a just little bit.”

And, like a hero, you appeared at her bedside in a flash, peppering her face with kisses. She squealed and laughed. Our sweet and happy girl.

And then, through a yawn, she said, “Okay. Now, Mama.”

I kissed her small cheek and felt my heart swell with love. Barry and Iris and Nora. Our perfect little you and me.

“Goodnight, Nora-Borealis.”

(That nickname never did quite stick.)

 

 

 

 

Remember the night before you left?

You kissed me softly, always so softly, and when you moved inside of me, I told you that we were meant to be together. I told you that you would always have someone to come home to. I told you that nothing would ever change how I felt about you.

I told you that wherever you'd go, you'd always be Barry and I'd always be Iris. And we would always find each other.

“You’re everything to me,” you said. “You always have been.”

And afterwards, we slept happily in each other’s arms, because we had it figured out. We had a plan.

We had a plan to bring you back.

 

 

 

 

We knew this was going to happen. We knew that you were going to leave us. But, somehow, I just thought we had more time.

(“I’m a speedster. We have all the time we want.”)

 

 

 

 

 

You once told me that I was your home.

Come back to me, Barry. Come home.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I had all these snippets of this new Barry/Iris fic (mostly about how Iris felt after Nora was born and then this whole Barry and Iris mutual mirror masturbation), but I just couldn't get the tone right. And then I read "The Light We Lost" by Jill Santopolo (which also has a sort of mutual masturbation scene, but without a mirror and I guess that's neither here nor there), where the author uses this stylistic choice of first person narrative, but where the protagonist is literally narrating to the other lead character, mostly using the pronoun "you". So, that was 100% stolen for this*. (As an aside, it's a good book to check out. TW: for the sad, but, um, this fic is also depressing. So. You know.)
> 
> *It occurs to be me that the novel "You" is also probably written in this style (I'm basing this only on my viewing of the television/Netflix show) and that this stylistic device might not be as a unique as I had thought. However, credit for where I nabbed the idea from where it's due.


End file.
